Liberty Of Speech Quotes

Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense - the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen. ~ William Borah

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge. ~ Francis Bacon

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. ~ John Stuart Mill

In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organised societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxembourg [sic] said, is 'freedom for the other fellow'. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: 'I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it.' If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way. ~ George Orwell

Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know. ~ Benjamin Franklin

As liberty of thought is absolute, so is liberty of speech, which is 'inseparable' from the liberty of thought. Liberty of speech, moreover, is essential not only for its own sake but for the sake of truth, which requires absolute liberty for the utterance of unpopular and even demonstrably false opinions. ~ Gertrude Himmelfarb

I would hope to inspire in my listeners a feeling of freedom - of speech, thought and political activity. ~ John Hall

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. ~ James Madison

...We don't defeat our enemy by giving him a platform to spread the very propaganda they hope will defeat you... You can only have freedom and liberty when others want that for you. When the other side only uses freedom with the hopes of destroying it later once their in charge, it's time to shut them down... They will use our Constitution as long as they need to until they get the power, then watch them trash it. ~ G. Michael Hopf

I will tell you whom to vote for: We will vote for the principles of civil and religious liberty, the man who knows the most and who has the best heart and brain for a statesman; and we do not care a farthing whether he is a Whig, a Democrat, a Barnburner, a Republican, or a New Light or anything else. ~ Brigham Young

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture. ~ William Blackstone

Dad's death didn't hollow me out the way Helen's had. After all, everyone had assumed Dad was a goner back when he got kicked in the head as a child. Instead, he had cheated death and, despite his gimp and speech impediment, lived a long life doing pretty much what he wanted. He hadn't drawn the best of cards, but he'd played his hand darned well, so what was there to grieve over? ~ Jeannette Walls

Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosophy and a perpetual entertainment; it is food for the hungry of wit and drink to those thirsting for laughter ... ~ W. Somerset Maugham

And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade? ~ Frederic Bastiat

During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the most insidious and duplicitous attacks from within, from those who undermine the virtues of our people, doing in advance the work of the Father of Lies. "There is no such thing as truth," they teach even the little ones. "Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with your self. Do what feels comfortable." Those who speak in this way prepare the jails of the twenty-first century. They do the work of tyrants. ~ Michael Novak

One by one I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected, prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and my people advancing in all the elements that go to make up the sum of the general welfare. And I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that whatever delays, whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty and humanity will ultimately prevail. ~ Frederick Douglass

Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I suffered from a quite severe speech impediment when I was young, and keeping a journal was part of the therapy. ~ George Fetherling

Holmes had no sisters, and a man who grows up without sisters has few defences against those wiles, those innocent wiles of body, speech and motion, with which nature has provided young females in its blind desire to propagate the species. ~ Michael Kurland

Finding that she was determined to get to the bottom of what seemed to him a very trivial affair, extricated himself without hesitation or compunction by advising her to apply to Vincent for information, since he was the instigator of the quarrel. Before he could make good his retreat, however, he was incensed and appalled by a command to go immediately to Vincent's room, and to inform him that his mama desired to have speech with him before he went down to breakfast. Since it was the time-honoured practice of the brothers to sacrifice each other in such situations as now confronted Claud, it was not fear of Vincent's wrath at finding himself betrayed which prompted Claud to despatch Polyphant on the errand, but the knowledge that not even a messenger bearing gifts of great price would meet with anything but the rudest of receptions from Vincent at this hour of the morning. ~ Georgette Heyer

If truth is not to be spoken, Sir, in a government, calling itself free, least it should be understood by the people, who are governed; and prevent their freely supplying the oil, that facilitates the movement of the cumbrous machine - If facts, which cannot be denied, be repressed; and reason, which cannot be controverted, be stifled; the time is not far distant, when such a country may say, adieu liberty! ~ Charlotte Turner Smith

Chance alone is at the source of every innovaton, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, only chance, absolute but blind liberty is at the root of the prodigious edifice that is evolution ... It today is the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. Stating life began by the chance collision of particles of nucleic acid in the "prebiotic soup." ~ Jacques Monod

Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

By necessity, we are direct and swift in speech and movement. This is the true dynamic that underlies our apocryphal rudeness. Also true: we do not make eye contact. Neither do we encourage it. Consider the number of humans a New Yorker will pass on a given day – on the subway, in a train or bus terminal, in an office or simply walking down the street. To facilitate speed and minimize drama, it's productive to keep one's eyes focused ahead. ~ Gina Greenlee

It is a truth forever, that where the speech of man stops short there Music's reign begins. ~ Richard Wagner

Bring it on, Tron! I dare you. Try to take away my freedom of expression. I'm a journalist. A free-speech warrior. I serve in the Army of the First Amendment. I didn't take this job for the bad money and the regressive health care coverage. I'm here for the truth, the sunshine, the casting open of closed doors! < ~ Rainbow Rowell

How sweet and gracious, even in common speech, Is that fine sense which men call Courtesy! Wholesome as air and genial as the light, Welcome in every clime as breath of flowers, It transmutes aliens into trusting friends, And gives its owner passport round the globe. ~ James Thomas Fields

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Something big was trapped inside him, some great sadness, and he felt if he could cry, or even articulate it in speech, it would relieve the pressure and provide him some measure of relief. But he couldn't reach it. He couldn't find a way to address it. He wondered if it would become the thing that defined him. ~ Nathan Ballingrud

I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding. ~ H.L. Mencken

Historically, the language we call Scots was a development of the Anglian speech of the Northumbrians who established their kingdom of Bernicia as far north as the Firth of Forth in the seventh century. This northern Anglo-Saxon language flourished in Lowland Scotland and emerged into a distinct language on its own, capable of rich expansion by borrowing from Latin, French and other sources with its own grammatical forms and methods of borrowing. By the time of the Makars of the fifteenth century it was a highly sophisticated poetic language, based on the spoken speech of the people, but enriched by many kinds of expansion, invention and 'aureation'. Distinct from literary English, but having much in common with it, literary Scots took its place in the late Middle Ages as one of the great literary languages of Europe. ~ David Daiches

O Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship. ~ John Baillie

Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy - not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits - despotic in his ordinary demeanour - known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty - when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity - to join in the cry of danger to liberty - to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion - to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day - It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may "ride the storm and direct the whirlwind. ~ Alexander Hamilton

My voice is the only material thing in which I can still reveal myself. Go ahead and cut off the hand or the testicles of a voice. Try to find the head of a voice, the orifice through which it passes, or even the breasts to which you can attach the clips of your electrodes. Nothing. Resonant tooth. ~ Abdellatif Laabi

In a speech given at an academic conference at Yale University in 1972, Fred Rogers said, "The impact of television must be considered in the light of the possibility that children are exposed to experiences which may be far beyond what their egos can deal with effectively. Those of us who produce television must assume the responsibility for providing images of trustworthy available adults who will modulate these experiences and attempt to keep them within manageable limits." Which is exactly what Rogers himself had tried to do with the production of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. ~ Maxwell King

The old laws of England they Whose reverend heads with age are gray, Children of a wiser day; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo Liberty! ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who speaks of liberty while the human mind is in chains? ~ Francis Wright

The ruling classes use broken and smashed up childhoods as weaponised instruments of domination around the world. This is why the government has no incentive to end child abuse; because the government needs abuse victims as enforcers. ~ Stefan Molyneux

Water is an individual, an animal, and is alive, remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an animal, and is alive. Recapitulation: the two individuals combined, constitute a third individual-and yet each continues to be an individual ... here was mute Nature explaining the sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously that even the commonest understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of words had labored to do it with speech and failed. ~ Mark Twain

Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave. ~ John Ruskin

In other hand of the enemy will arise the fortune hero. ~ Lena Hussain

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade - with reason, not force, as their final arbiter - it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability - and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil? ~ Ayn Rand

The true liberty of the press is amply secured by permitting every man to publish his opinion; but it is due to the peace and dignity of society, to inquire into the motives of such publications, and to distinguish between those which are meant for use and reformation, and with an eye solely to the public good, and those which are intended merely to delude and defame. To the latter description, it is impossible that any good government should afford protection and impunity. ~ Thomas McKean

Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles. ~ Gerry Spence

That all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world; and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall, in no ways, be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion, or practice, in manners of faith and worship, nor shall they be compelled, at any time, to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatever. ~ William Penn

This country was founded upon the principle that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - those rights are what make America great, and they belong to each and every one of us. ~ Charles B. Rangel

If you have had an unfortunate experience, forget it. If you have made a failure in speech, your song, your book, your article, if you have been placed in an embarrassing position, if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step, if you have been slandered and abused, do not dwell upon it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and the presence of their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour. There is nothing in it. Drop them. Forget them. Wipe them out of your mind forever. If you have been indiscreet, imprudent, if you have been talked about, if your reputation has been injured so that you fear you can never outgrow it or redeem it, do not drag the hideous shadows, the rattling skeletons about with you, Rub them off from the shite of memory. Wipe them out. Forget them. Start with a clean slate and spend all your energies in keeping it clean for the future. ~ Orison Swett Marden

We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest errors that ignorance can make - we assume our standard of values is shared by all other humans in the world. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Internet's like one big bathroom wall with a lot of people who anonymously can say really mean things. It's fine, I believe in freedom of speech and I think people should think what they want, but I don't care to hear it. ~ Zooey Deschanel